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The Code of California Regulations (CCR) Title 15 defines a Security Threat Group (STG) as “any ongoing formal or informal organization, association, or group of three or more persons which has a common name or identifying sign or symbol whose members and/or associates, individually or collectively, engage or have engaged, on behalf of that organization, association or group, in two or more acts which include planning, organizing, threatening, financing, soliciting or committing unlawful acts, or acts of misconduct.”

Anthony Robinson Jr. in 2015

The interesting thing about this definition is that it does not specifically use the word inmate or prisoner, but identifies any individual, group or association engaging in unlawful acts.

The majority of employees at La Palma Correctional Center who work on Compound 3 fit the description of a Security Threat Group due to their unlawful conduct, but who investigates them or makes them answerable? Certainly not themselves. Yet I am being targeted for my work – a work that was created to build a constructive humanity – while these prison officials are rewarded for work that assaults the very fabric that makes us human and seeks to destroy lives.

The subjective nature in which prison officials design and define prison regulations is intended to create a barricade around themselves whereby they can target and freely fire upon prisoners – hitting them with rule infractions that add time to their sentences, taking away privileges that help connect them to their families etc., all the while, protecting themselves from the ricochet of fairness that keeps them safe from their own bullets when they conduct themselves in a likewise unlawful manner.

I am being targeted for my work – a work that was created to build a constructive humanity – while these prison officials are rewarded for work that assaults the very fabric that makes us human and seeks to destroy lives.

“Consciousness is the key to one’s deliverance from oppression of all types. Prison writers are the visionaries who take the prison experience and translate it to others in prison and outside of these concentration camps. The prison theoretician sees those paths which are not yet cut and injects theory into our world so that others can build on these thoughts.” – Jose H. Villarreal

We cannot ignore the continued torture existing in facilities that are operating in cruel and inhuman ways and whose actions are not just targeted against prisoners but the public as well. Case in point: The STG coordinator, Nathaniel M. Freeman, has informed me that a beautiful sista supporter many of us know is a target. She is con­sidered a BGF “facilitator” because she writes and corresponds with some prisoners who they considered to be affiliated. This is a great miscarriage of justice as it is used to further isolate those prisoners she seeks to help in work that seeks to uplift.

STG Coordinator Freeman asked me the other day as he came to hit my cell again: “Are you still going to publish any articles in the Bay View and organize work strikes?” he said, hinting at the reason I was being targeted in the first place.

For those of us who have faced the definition of our inflictions through the experience of our treatment in prison, we are striving to come up with practical strategies to bring about results that add meaning to not only our lives but the lives of others.

“The world is a dangerous place to live, not because of the people who do evil, but because of the people who don’t do anything about it.” – Albert Einstein

The man in prison who has the courage to see past the barb wired dynamics of his circumstances and bring his humanity to the surface to be of service to a cause beyond himself is a standing miracle against a strong current. And we can’t stand alone.

A young Black man in Richmond, California, is arrested on drug and gang charges. Those are the excuses for imprisonment that ballooned the prison population 500 percent in the past 40 years. Yet the largest and most dangerous gang in California is CCPOA, the prison guards’ union. Prison guards proudly call themselves the Green Wall, trying to intimidate prisoners with their superior fire power. – Photo: Lacy Atkins, S.F. Chronicle

For too long we have been isolated even when articles are read or voices are heard and responded to. Isolated in terms of results, because as many of my ideas and articles that are read, the work requires the ability to procure human resources. Without funding for The New Underground RailRoad Movement, we are stuck on one track.

In my experience, the “enemies of humanity” are the good people who have become comfortable reading and listening, but never doing. Those prison officials who are oppressing us have amassed a huge stockpile of resources and it would be impractical for us to assume that we can combat them without a remnant of the same.

Our biggest resource has always been the faith of the people who know that the historical arc will bend towards justice. But we are tasked with putting forth an effort to help it along the way.

Right now I am at a pivotal moment in my time in regards to having an opportunity for early parole consideration under the Youth Offender SB 261, and the mere scrutiny of this STG retaliatory witchhunt has the potential to greatly hinder any chance that a board will release me to parole, and the officials targeting me know this.

This is the assistance I need in moving forward: I need to raise funds in the amount of $500 to pay the cost of registering my non-profit The New UnderGround RailRoad Movement, and I need any volunteers who are good at researching to contact me. The material I will be needing is commercial liens process, how to set up a charitable trust, secured party filing, and tracking down bid bonds.

An open letter to the enemies of humanity

“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.” – Irish statesman Edmund Burke

“Constructive notice” is a term used in law that explains or proclaims: Ignorance of the law may not be used as a defense for breaking the law.

Well, what of humanity? If a construct such as the law, which was created by man, can set a bar for such a standard of bearing responsibility in a legal sense, should not humanity’s bar be at least met at the same level or a higher one – a level that proclaims “Constructive Notice of Humanity”?

It is a term in society where the people are expected to take notice of the atrocities and inhumanity being perpetuated around them and act in responsible ways to end oppression where they see it, enabling the values that they deem fundamental to be expressed beyond the myopic extension of their own doorstep and into the field of dreams of their neighbors and fellow human beings.

Responsibility means the ability to respond. People are under the false assumption that going to school, working a 9 to 5, and “staying out of the way” is being responsible. No, in this day and age where the dynamics of exploitation and oppression are so prevalent in society, “staying out of the way” is part of the problem.

“Constructive notice” is a term used in law that explains or proclaims: Ignorance of the law may not be used as a defense for breaking the law. Well, what of humanity?

When a cause comes along or when an issue needs to be addressed, too many people in America are “staying out of the way,” only to live long enough to see that same issue adversely affect the lives of their children. Oppressive realities do not go away because we ignore them; they, like cancer, only metastasize when we do nothing about them. Oppressors – and prison officials – like bullies, only become more aggravating when no one stands up to them.

In February STG Coordinator Nathaniel M. Freeman, along with SORT officers Reed and Francisco, ran up in my cell armed with pepper spray, excessive shouting designed to intimidate or threaten, and the musk of inhumanity, forcing me to crawl from my bunk to the floor, placing my arms and legs behind my back in hog tie fashion, at which point they placed plastic restraints on my hands excessively tight, cutting off blood circulation, dragging me out of my cell in my socks.

STG Coordinator Nathaniel M. Freeman took personal property, letters, literature, address book and paperwork outside of my presence without properly inventorying items and allowing me to sign off on verifying them, as the California Code of Regulations dictates.

They are reviewing material to see if they can trump validation charges against me, the supposed reason being that a Mr. Terrance White had written me in response to one of my articles. This letter I never received because the corporate carpetbaggers in the mailroom, B. Triplett and P. Hirsh, confiscated it.